Hulu a Better Deal for Advertisers?

There’s some talk in online communities about the state of Hulu and whether they’re limited number of advertisers is a bad sign for the company.

My personal opinion is that advertising on Hulu has some serious advantages over regular broadcast television, at least if you discount the difference in the number of viewers.

As a viewer, I’m far more likely to sit through the shorter commercials on Hulu, even if they’re unskippable, simply because the interruptions aren’t long and frequent. Also, I’m noticing that I’m paying far more attention to the commercials simply because there’s less of them. There isn’t a “wall of advertising” that ends up blurring the messages into noise.

I don’t think Hulu will entirely kill broadcast or even cable television, at least not for the current generation of viewers who have grown used to it, but it’s certainly another sign that digital distribution channels like iTunes, Xbox Marketplace and Netflix streaming video are here for the duration.